After the series in Detroit, they fly to Baltimore, a flight that starts out bumpy and never really settles. Zach’s nerves are similarly fraught. He spends most of the flight contemplating all the ways this could go wrong, even after his mother assured him that his friend was a welcome late addition. With the time difference, it’s almost ten at night when they land, and it takes another hour to get their stuff and make it to Zach’s parents’ house out in Pikesville.
The windows are lit when they get there, his mother coming out to the front stoop as they each wheel a suitcase up the steps.
Eugenio’s holding a gift, something actually gift-wrapped, one he withdrew from his luggage when they picked it up at the carousel. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, and Zach’s mother insists he hug her in greeting, before turning and asking Zach if they bothered to feed them on the plane and then ushering them in to have the fourth or fifth meal of the day.
His parents renovated their kitchen sometime in the ’80s, all wood cabinets and Formica. It hasn’t changed, save the paint, which he convinced them to do when a crack appeared in the plaster, even if they didn’t let him pay for it.
Eugenio occupies one of the armless kitchen chairs, sitting across the table from Zach at a safe distance. He’s surveying the array of casserole dishes, white with blue flowers on the side, glass lids fogged with water. “This isn’t all for us, right?”
Zach’s mom shushes him and tells them they both look thin on principle, even though Zach’s been able to keep more weight on this season than he has previously.
“It’s not that much.” She pulls a pan from the oven, along with a foil-wrapped package that turns out to be warmed challah. “Go and wash your hands. There’s chicken.”
There’s chicken, white rice, a container of squash with puddles of margarine on top of it, challah, boiled green beans with carrots cut into coins, a little dish of stewed apples.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” Zach says, sitting.
His mother reaches for his hand, grasping it, and recites a quick shehecheyanu, something she always does when he comes home after a long absence. Though it’s different with Eugenio here, looking inquisitive, as she says the prayer thanking God for sustaining them, one said on special occasions including, apparently, Zach coming to a fundraiser with a polite friend.
“Mom,” he says, faintly embarrassed.
“We haven’t seen you since January. I can’t be grateful that you’re here? Let me go heat you up some soup.”
They eat. She sits and watches them, offering seconds, thirds, and asking if they didn’t like something when Zach declines fourths, complimenting Eugenio on being a “good eater.”
Eugenio is sitting straighter than he normally does, and he answers Zach’s mom’s questions between forkfuls of food, when she asks him where he grew up, where his parents are from, what they do, and what their parents did. If they ever get to go back to Venezuela to see family, which he does, but says the political situation is making it harder for them to do.
“Do you still have cousins in Russia?” Eugenio asks, when Zach’s mother mentions that’s where her mother immigrated from.
“No, we’re all here now.” She gets up, offering more food. And Eugenio glances in question at Zach, who shakes his head slightly.
They finish eating. Eugenio gets up to clear the plates to the sink without being asked, though Zach’s mom tsks at him to sit back down and to rest, and then tells Zach to come help her repackage the remains of the food. Zach takes the things she hands out of the fridge, various reused cottage cheese containers with leftovers, a clear plastic Tupperware container full of what looks like vegetable scraps: carrot peels, onion paper, a few sad chunks of potato.
“I’m saving them to make broth,” she says.
“Eugenio does that too. He’s a good cook.”
And she pauses at that, looking to where Eugenio is browsing the set of cookbooks on the shelf. “Does he know how to cook kosher?”
“Um, I don’t think so?”
Which is how they end up in front of his mother’s cookbook shelf, taking out and then replacing various cookbooks. “This one,” she says, finally.
Zach pulls out the New York Times Jewish Cookbook, puts it on the counter, shakes his hand as if protesting the book’s weight. “They’re gonna charge a baggage overage fee for this thing.”
“It’ll be worth it.” She hands the book to Eugenio, who opens it and begins to leaf through it, fingers skimming the recipes.
“Where should I start?” he asks.
She ushers him back to the table with a set of sticky notes to amend various recipes where the cookbook authors didn’t know what they were doing, jotting down where to add a packet of onion soup mix or a few tablespoons of grape jelly to brisket.
“Grape jelly?” he asks Zach, when Zach’s mother has gone into the other room for something.
“It’s good. Or maybe it just reminds me of good memories.”
“Then I’ll try to make it for you.” Eugenio says it low and then glances around before sliding his hand over Zach’s, the brush of their fingers together as damning as if they were kissing should Zach’s mother walk back in.
“Stop.” But Zach doesn’t withdraw his hand.
“She seems nice.”
“Yeah, well, you had fourths, so you’re on her good side for now.”
“For the record, you don’t look thin to me.” Eugenio gives him a look, one as warm as the incandescent light bulbs buzzing above them, one that he should not be giving Zach, not standing close to him, breathing the same breath.
Zach moves away, interjecting space between them, in time for his mother to return. She has another recipe with her, this one a set of notes in her looping handwriting. She tucks it into the cookbook. “That one you should save for when you have someone to make it for.”
Later, upstairs, Eugenio does a slow circuit around the perimeter of Zach’s childhood bedroom, which his parents have turned into a home office-slash-guest bedroom. The bed is new. Zach sent money for a mattress, a bedframe, a check and then another when they didn’t cash the first one. He sits on it, watching Eugenio examine the artifacts from his childhood, the pictures from Little League tournaments and his bar mitzvah. The ones his parents added: aerial photos of the Elephants Coliseum and the new Federals stadium sitting on the banks of the Anacostia River.
“What’s this?” Eugenio points to one of the frames.
“It’s a ketubah. It’s like a marriage contract.” And Zach tries to remember vaguely what it says, or what they learned about them in Hebrew school, and remembers only the boiling feeling when they were discussed that he couldn’t get married, so didn’t need to know about them. He pulls out his phone, which connects to his parents’ sluggish Wi-Fi, searching for an explainer and then skimming it. “It’s vowing to support and to take care of one another. And, um, other obligations.”
Eugenio raises an eyebrow at that.
“The term conjugal relations comes up a lot in this article.” And Zach he can feel the color up on his cheeks, Eugenio looking at him in slight disbelief.
“It’s probably good it’s in Hebrew.”
“Technically, I think that’s Aramaic.”
Eugenio comes over to where Zach is sitting on the edge of the bed, standing between his thighs and leaning to kiss him, but stopping when Zach glances at the door. It’s shut, the lock turned, but the house is old enough that every creaking floorboard feels like an incrimination. “We don’t have to.” Though Eugenio trails a hand across Zach’s arm, lingering at the swell of Zach’s biceps.
“I want to.” And Zach wonders what it would be like to pull Eugenio down, to bury themselves in each other for a while. If the bed frame squeaks or if the mattress would protest, or if Eugenio, who is often loud, can be quiet. If he’ll stay with Zach, after, and sneak back to the other guest room in the middle of the night like he does on road trips. If one of Zach’s parents would encounter him, getting up to get a glass of water or checking to see if they closed all the windows in the dining room. “I want to,” Zach says, again, “but we probably shouldn’t.”
“It’s hard for you being here.”
And Zach nods, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “You know, you go home, and you revert back to how you were growing up?”
“Yeah, though mostly my parents just want to talk about whatever book it is they’re reading, so that’s easier.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be rough,” Zach says. “Just everyone here, my mom’s gonna declare the house a mess even though she’s been cleaning for a week, and we’ll be running around. And I probably should have warned you about all of this so you could spend some time getting in an actual vacation.”
“Hey.” Eugenio moves to lie next to Zach, close enough that the mattress dips in the middle, the frame beginning to complain about their combined weight. “C’mere.” He settles on the side of the bed closer to the wall, Zach next to him, body stiff and then relaxing when Eugenio starts petting his hand through Zach’s hair.
“I found a couple places in Cambria, for when the season’s over,” Eugenio says. “It’s down the coast from Oakland. Supposed to be nice there all year round. If you still wanted to go to the beach.” And he kisses Zach, at his forehead, at his hairline, by the curve of his ear.
It makes Zach miss Oakland and the privacy afforded by three thousand miles, the world spun down to only the two of them. He imagines Eugenio at a beach house, at restaurants, eager to tell Zach about wine pairings, as if Zach didn’t grow up on kosher wine and so his main metric is drinkable. All of which is too much to say, here, in the waystation of his childhood bedroom. So he says only, “I’d like that. Thank you.”
Eugenio kisses his hair again before starting to get up. “I should probably go sleep in the other room.”
“Will you stay?” It feels like almost too much, like Zach’s asking for something he doesn’t know how to put into words.
“Of course I’ll stay.” He kisses Zach again, wrapping an arm around him like he does when they’re in close-packed restaurant booths.
And they lie there together for a long time, Zach watching the streetlights reflect off his parents’ ketubah, its calligraphy spelling out all their promises to one another.
Zach wakes the next morning to the sound of the vacuum cleaner in the hallway outside his room, door open, and his sister Aviva vacuuming with one hand while texting with the other.
“Morning, lazy,” she says. “Go find out what you’re supposed to be doing.”
What Zach’s supposed to be doing is bringing up an unimaginable amount of stuff out of the chest freezer in his parents’ basement, going to get ice, going to pick up flowers, and going back to the store to return the ice he got and get different ice.
Back at the house, Zach’s mom conscripts Eugenio into a conversation about the merits of reheating techniques, as Zach wavers between monitoring their interaction and needing a break, before he decides on the latter.
He finds Aviva in the backyard. It’s a warm day, the sun evaporating the late-morning rain off their lawn, the stand-up basketball hoop casting a shadow over the small concrete patio. When he comes out, she reaches down by the leg of one of the lawn chairs to move something, then picks it up when she sees it’s him. A bottle of beer, and another unopened one beside it that she offers him, twisting off the cap.
“Is it always like this and did I just forget?” he asks.
“I mean, you didn’t have to cook.” She picks up a basketball, dribbling it, then sinking it into the hoop. “And all you have to do tonight is stand there and look famous with your famous friends, and not make sure some council member has wine.”
“I would have paid for catering. Why didn’t you just ask?”
“Zach, you know how it is. Mom’s just being Mom.” She waves her hand; something flashes at her wrist.
“Did you get a tattoo?”
“Shit, the stupid coverup makeup must have come off while I was scrubbing something.”
“Let me see,” he says. She extends her arm. The tattoo sits right above her wrist, a honeycombed series of hexagons and a pentagon, a few lines radiating from it. “What is that?”
“An estrogen molecule. Don’t tell them, okay? I’ll get no end of grief.”
And he considers how Eugenio slept with him for some of the night, kissing him and then going back to the other room, how his presence feels at once comforting and terrifying. “You know I won’t say anything.”
She sets her beer down on the patio edge and nods to where he’s holding his. “Did you wanna play?”
“I’m not actually allowed to play in case I get injured.”
“Sounds like some quitter talk to me.” She’s half a foot shorter than he is, though her hair tries to compensate for that, puffing in the Maryland humidity, as she dribbles and spins and shoots around where he’s standing. She also elbows him in the low ribs, more than once, hard, bruising pokes.
“Please don’t make me have to see the team medical staff because of a pickup game,” he says, “especially one where I’m not actually playing.”
“You’re just mad that I’m whooping your ass.” She shoots over where he’s standing, ball rolling on the rim before settling into the basket. She raises her arms in victory. “I thought baseball players were supposed to be athletes.”
“It’s a common misconception.” But he swats the ball out from where she’s dribbling again, then turns and deliberately misses, shooting a foot wide of the hoop. The ball spins into the backyard grass, coming to rest in the tangled roots of their big oak tree.
Eugenio comes out then, and he looks tired, either from having gotten up in the middle of the night or from being kept busy with the preparations.
“You wanna play?” Aviva asks. He declines but offers to play HORSE instead, and they take turns shooting: Aviva, then Zach, then Eugenio.
Which is how Zach discovers Eugenio is very, very bad at basketball. “Aren’t you from Indiana?” Zach says, when he misses another easy shot. “I thought you all could do free throws.”
“How many base runners have you caught this season?” Though Eugenio’s laughing at himself. “Come show me what I’m supposed to be doing.”
And it’s nothing, for them to jostle against one another in the middle of a training session or in the middle of a game, in the dugout or in the batting cages. But they’re in his parents’ backyard, under Aviva’s supervision.
Eugenio is sweating a little in the July heat, spots at his temples and a sheen on his neck, an atmosphere coming off his skin when Zach steps close to him.
“You want me to show you?” Zach says.
Eugenio dribbles a few times, and then lets Zach reposition how he’s shooting. It’s different from their framing practice months ago. Eugenio doesn’t resist the adjustment, loose and happy and pausing to take occasional sips from a beer, letting Zach touch him. And he tosses again, missing wide, Zach throwing his hands up in mock frustration.
“I’m gonna go see if Mom needs anything,” Aviva says.
When she’s gone, Eugenio dribbles again, then shoots, sinking it perfectly.
“Were you faking it?” Zach says, laughing.
Eugenio shrugs, expression both guilty and delighted at being caught. “When is Morgan getting here?”
And shit, Zach set his phone down on an outdoor chair. When he checks it, there are five texts from Morgan—that she’s getting ready to leave, that she’s leaving, that she’s here, that his mom let her in. The last one is a picture of a slice of babka, and Morgan’s feigned outrage that Zach didn’t introduce her to the dessert earlier in their friendship. There’s hot tea in a glass mug next to it, accompanied by a little bowl of sugar cubes, and his mother must really approve of her if she got the lecture on how Russian Jews drink tea with sugar between their teeth.
“She’s here already.” Zach picks up his beer, girding himself to reenter the house and whatever chores await.
“I think I’ll stay outside for a little while,” Eugenio says.
“Need a break?”
“Your mom is very particular about things.”
“I’m aware. But, you know, if you’re saying that.”
“I’m not particular.” Though Eugenio can’t keep a straight face as he says it, smile bright as the July sun, and Zach wants to kiss him then, in the shade of their pin oak tree. He goes inside instead.
When he gets into the kitchen, Morgan is sitting with his mother’s laptop open, an old, slow Mac that’s making a grinding noise. His mom is pointing at something in a document, explaining how they’ve set up an account for the fundraiser. “The paperwork was just a nightmare.”
“Mom, I’m sure Morgan is very interested in, uh, accounting.”
“I actually asked her,” Morgan says. “Besides, it was that or watch a middle school teacher beat you at basketball.”
And Morgan knows Eugenio is there, but it’s a relief that she wasn’t watching him and Eugenio just now, even if they weren’t doing anything more than goofing around on the back patio. “I didn’t know you were interested in fundraising,” Zach says.
“How else is she going to raise the money to go to Korea?” his mom says. And when Zach doesn’t respond, and Morgan doesn’t clarify, his mom gets up, clearing her laptop but leaving the babka.
“Korea?” Zach says, finally.
“I didn’t want to tell you like this. But I’m taking a leave of absence from the team in September. There’s a baseball tournament in Korea.”
“And they need a strength coach?”
“No, Zach. I’m playing in it. That’s why I shot that video of me throwing. They normally have tryouts, but since I couldn’t get the time away.” She hands him her phone, an announcement pulled up in the browser, the roster for Team USA at the Women’s Baseball World Cup, with Samantha Morgan listed as a pitcher and infielder.
“Oh, wow,” he says. “Um, congrats. When were you gonna tell the team?”
“I told the front office a week ago.”
“They haven’t mentioned it. I figured Stephanie would, I don’t know, want to do a profile or something.”
“That’s ’cause I might not have a job when I get back. They’re ‘considering their options,’ whatever the fuck that means.”
“You’re still gonna go?”
“They only have the tournament every couple of years.”
“I just figured, I don’t know, that you might not get a chance to work for a team again, given—”
“Given that I had to list my name as Sam on my résumé to even get them to call me back. Just say it if you’re gonna say it.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You did, though,” she says. “Christ. With all the shit they pull. You know, I don’t really want to be a publicity stunt for them, especially when I spend half my time convincing players to actually fucking listen to me.”
“I guess I didn’t realize you hated it that much. I mean, if you’re gonna go, they’re just gonna replace you with some guy.”
“And you’re not really listening either.” She slides her chair out, legs scraping on the linoleum. “You don’t know what it’s like. To want to play so bad. To be so close to it and not be able to get there.”
Something that feels worse than if she punched him. With it the urge to fire back, You don’t know what I’ve given up to play. An accusation he doesn’t want to explain, especially not with his family listening.
She doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “I gotta get changed. Go comb your hair. Wouldn’t want you to look bad in photos.”
Zach goes and puts on his suit, along with the watch Gordon bought everyone on the team last year for winning the division. He only brought one belt—the one he wears for games, banged up in the too-bright lights of his parents’ guest bathroom.
“You okay?” Aviva’s standing in the hallway, already dressed, hair more or less tamed back, the tattoo at her wrist concealed. “I heard yelling.”
“Yeah, all good.”
Eugenio emerges from the room he’s staying in. He’s wearing a suit that sits close to his body, a dress shirt that reflects his midsummer tan. He looks handsome and famous, and Zach tells the second one, Aviva lingering like they both might chicken out and not go downstairs.
Guests are beginning to arrive, and his mother directs him: to shake hands and pose for photos. To go and fix himself a plate of food. To go find Aviva and ask her where the second bag of ice got put. To shake more hands, and pose for more pictures, and sign a few things he’s handed.
His parents’ dining room is packed with guests eating finger foods, balancing clear plastic plates and wineglasses he snapped together earlier. Aviva floats around, adding serving utensils to dishes, clearing abandoned plates, answering questions, and pointing guests his way. He’s wearing his hearing aid, though it’s hard to hear everything with the number of people, all of whom are talking loudly so as to be heard over one another.
His mother separates him from Eugenio in order to, Zach suspects, prevent them from talking with each other rather than the guests. Across the room, Morgan’s greeting people, taking pictures. She’s wearing a forest-green suit, Elephants green, and is animatedly talking to a woman from his parents’ shul who’s there with her young daughter. Her wife, Lydia, is standing next to them in a yellow dress, dark hair piled into a bun, Morgan’s fingers loosely held in hers. And Zach imagines for a second that he could do the same with Eugenio, a daydream he shakes himself out of when another guest asks for a picture and a story about facing big-league pitching.
His mother comes over with a woman about Zach’s age in tow.
“Zach,” she says, “this is Rachel.” She says it the Hebrew way, the ch of it in her throat.
Zach shakes her hand, telling her it’s nice to meet her, and his mother retreats. Rachel isn’t tall—she’s at least a foot shorter than he is, with brown hair that reflects the light of his parents’ dining room chandelier. “I hear you’re famous,” she says. “At least, that’s what my mother told me four times in the car on the way over.”
“I play baseball for the Oakland Elephants.”
“She mentioned.” Rachel glances around the room. “I think this might be a setup.” It’s said conspiratorially, with the tone of parents, what can you do? Part of their families’ active campaign for marriage and grandchildren. She’s also smiling at him like she expects a response other than his awkward silence.
Across the room, Eugenio is talking with some of his parents’ friends, telling a story that Zach can’t make out, but he can hear him laugh over the chatter. And he catches Zach looking at him, flashing a grin.
“Would you excuse me for a second?” Zach says.
He flees upstairs, where he finds Aviva in the hallway outside the guest room sitting against a wall. Her phone is loosely cradled in her hand, though it’s bright with notifications.
“Are you hiding too?” he asks.
“These shoes give me blisters.” She has them off beside her. “Don’t you have photos to take?”
“It’s loud down there. I was just gonna, I don’t know, scroll through my phone for a minute.”
“Well, if you’re up here, I better go back downstairs. Wouldn’t want Mom to come looking.”
“I can go back down.”
She hisses when she puts her shoes back on. “No, it’s all right.” She gets another alert. She answers it, shielding her screen from him, before looking up as if daring him to ask why she’s keeping it from him.
“Is there anything I can do to help? I mean, I’m just mostly standing around and pretending like half these people don’t think I play for the O’s.”
“Must be real rough. Someone asked me if you were Joe Mauer, so, you know, enjoy that.” And she walks off.
Eugenio comes up a few minutes later, when Zach is standing in the guest room, door open so he can pretend he’s not avoiding people. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah.” Though Zach knows he sounds whiny. “Well, no. Everyone is kind of pissed off at me.”
“I’m not pissed at you.” Eugenio looks out at the unoccupied hallway beyond the door before pressing a kiss to Zach’s temple. “I might be if I don’t get to take that suit off you later, though.”
Zach sighs audibly, and Eugenio corrals him over to sit down, taking his suit jacket off and ignoring his protests that his shirt will wrinkle. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
And Zach tells him about having a fight with Morgan, though not what the fight was actually about. About Aviva being irritated with him. About how his parents still won’t take any of his money, even to pay for catering.
“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know what I’d do otherwise.” Zach swipes his hand through his hair, and he’ll have to fix it again if he’s going to take pictures. “Is that weird to say?”
“No, it’s not weird.” Eugenio smiles, teeth bright, the familiar curve of his bottom lip, though it fades. “Zach, I think your mom is looking for you.”
And Zach turns, slowly, carefully, his face going hot, from where they’re sitting on Zach’s bed, too close, Eugenio’s hand resting on Zach’s thigh. Zach’s mother is standing in the doorway, frowning. A sense of creeping dread—not knowing how much she heard or what she thinks of them, sitting together—washes over him.
“Zach, your presence is missed downstairs,” she says, eyes narrowed. She doesn’t acknowledge that Eugenio is there too. And Zach doesn’t know if moving away is worse than staying put, but Eugenio makes the decision for him, going over to where he hung his suit jacket on the back of the desk chair and putting it back on.
Zach can’t seem to move. His shirt collar feels tight, the top button strangling him. “I’m going.” He breathes, trying to quell a rising sense of panic. “Just give me a second.”
She stands in the doorway, like she doesn’t trust them to go without her surveillance, hallway lights glinting off the gray streaks in her undyed hair. “You could...” She pauses, reconsidering what she’s about to say. “I’ll see you in a minute. And you should apologize to Rachel.”
“Was Rachel who you were talking with downstairs?” Eugenio says, when Zach’s mother leaves.
“I should probably have warned you something like that was gonna happen. Usually they’re a little more subtle about setting me up.”
“We could tell her—your mom, I mean—about us. She might already suspect something. And it’s not fair to Rachel either.”
Something Zach knows, even if it feels too enormous to deal with right now. “You know you don’t have anything to worry about.”
“I know. But it’s still not fair to anyone. Even if you don’t tell your mom everything, it’s been five months.”
“Has it?” And it’s the wrong thing to say. Zach knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as he says it.
“Yes,” Eugenio says, tightly, “yes, it has.”
“I’m sorry. Shit, I can’t do anything right today.”
“Your parents don’t seem to have a problem with Morgan and Lydia.”
“It’s different,” Zach says. “It’s different when it’s their own kid, okay? Because it’ll be something like: Am I sure? Is it a phase? Or that maybe I should try dating Rachel or someone like her, just to see. I’m supposed to get married, have kids. Go to shul with them and live twenty minutes away. I can’t have that and still play. We can’t.”
“We could.” Eugenio comes up to Zach, hands on his shoulders. “Not now, but, you know, at some point.”
“You don’t know, growing up, what it was like.”
“I know what it’s like to have my parents put expectations on me.” His voice is gentle, like Zach will break if he gets any louder. “And you might be the first guy I’ve been with, but the thought occurred to me before.”
“Can we give it some time? It’ll be harder for them to dismiss this as not being serious if we’ve been together longer.”
Eugenio kisses him, a long enough kiss that Zach considers just shutting the door, shutting them away from the demands of the world, Eugenio a shield between him and the things he can’t bring himself to face. Then Eugenio withdraws, straightening the lapels of Zach’s jacket, smoothing his hand down his shirt. “Sure, Zach, we can give it some time.”